The present disclosure relates to an electronic apparatus provided with a haptic vibration generation function for vibrating a contact portion with the user.
As an input device for inputting data to an electronic apparatus, there can be a keyboard, a jog dial, a mouse, a scanner, a voice recognition device, and so on. The keyboard is equipped with a number of keys, and is capable of inputting alphabets or symbols respectively corresponding to the keys. The jog dial is capable of inputting an amount of rotation of its rotator. In building the keyboard or the jog dial in the electronic apparatus, design limitations regarding the size and the weight thereof problematically occur.
In the past, in order for simplify the machine design of such an input device, there has been developed an input device having a contact detection sensor provided to the jog dial for temporarily vibrating an area around a contact position in accordance with variation of the contact position or the contact area thereof to provide the user with the same operation feeling as the operation feeling of the jog dial, thereby reducing the overall size and the weight of the apparatus (see, for example, JP-A-2004-252836).
Further, a touch panel is an input device integrated with a display screen. Since the user directly touches the input object in the touch panel, the touch panel can offer natural operationality. Further, the layout of the touch panel can freely be modified with software control. The touch panel dose not offer a haptic operation, and accordingly causes the user to have a barren impression. Consequently, in recent years, there has been developed an input device provided with realistic operationality by vibrating the touch panel to reproduce a haptic vibration corresponding to friction in holding down or sliding a button.
FIG. 12 is a block diagram showing an internal structure of a cellular phone 100 provided with a haptic reproduction function. The cellular phone 100 is provided with an antenna 101 for transmitting and receiving radio waves, a shared terminal 102 for amplifying the radio waves, a receiving section 103 for demodulating the radio waves received by the antenna 101, a transmission section 105 for modulating the signal output from a central processing unit (CPU) 104 to output it to the antenna 101, a memory 106 as a working area of the CPU 104, a display section 107 for displaying images, an image processing section 108 for generating images to be displayed on the display section 107, a microphone 109 for inputting spoken voice of the user, and a loudspeaker 110 for outputting ring alert or spoken voice. Further, for realizing the function of providing the haptic vibration, the cellular phone 100 is provided with an input detection section 111 for detecting an input position and an input amount (force), an A/D driver 112 for amplifying an output of the input detection section 111, piezoelectric actuators 113A through 113C for generating haptic vibration, and an actuator driver 114 for driving the piezoelectric actuators 113A through 113C.
The cellular phone 100 outputs a vibration pattern to the piezoelectric actuators 113A through 113C based on the input position information and the input amount detected by the input detection section 111 to vibrate the piezoelectric actuators 113A through 113C, thereby causing haptic vibration corresponding to input haptic impression of an actual switch.
In general, the cellular phone is provided with the microphone 109, the loudspeaker 110, the display section 107, and so on. In the cellular phone 100 shown in FIG. 12, there are additionally required the actuator drive circuit 114 and a plurality of piezoelectric actuators 113A through 113C to generate haptic vibration. It does not apply only to cellular phones that an additional function causes increase in the number of components, resulting in design limitations in the size and the weight.
Therefore, it is desirable to simplify the structure of the electronic apparatus provided with a haptic vibration generation function.